The elections in Sweden are exciting

Norwegian Prime Minister, Erna Solberg, is waiting for the final count of the votes after Sunday’s general elections in Sweden.

She currently has no comment on the unclear political situation where the struggle for Government power already has begun.

– I have no other comment than that this is very exciting. We’ll have to wait and see how the final outcome is when they have finished counting all the votes, says Solberg to NTB.

Even when the last results were reported during the night before Monday, the Alliance – the bourgeois parties – demanded that Prime Minister Stefan Löfven and his Red-Green Government hand in their resignation. Löfven stated that it is not going to happen, at least not before the Swedish Parliament comes together in two weeks. Then the national assembly will vote for the position of Prime Minister.

The Conservatives (Moderaterna) and their leader and Prime Minister candidate, Ulf Kristersson, have promised voters a change of Government, regardless of whether the Red-Green parties remain larger than the Alliance.

At the same time, all Alliance party leaders have stated that they will fight for Government power without the support from the Swedish Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna). Party leader of SD, Jimmy Åkesson, believes that Kristersson must choose between a collaboration with Löfven across the traditional Left-Right divide, or have talks with his party in the coming weeks.

– This is Swedish politics, and Swedish politicians have to figure it out without interference from me. The political parties in Sweden must be the ones that form the basis for a Government, not those of us who comment from the outside, says Solberg.

Facts after the Swedish General Elections

There are many questions after the general elections in Sweden, where the final outcome is not yet clear.

Will Prime Minister Stefan Löfven remain in office?

Will the Sweden Democrats have enhanced influence?

Who obtains Government power and who will they cooperate with?

Despite the fact that the bourgeois parties in the Alliance demand the resignation of Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, the Social Democrats leader announced at the election wake, that he has no plans to step down.

When The Swedish Parliament (Riksdagen) convenes on September 25th, the MP’s will first elect a President, or Speaker (Talmann), as it is called in Sweden.

It is the Speaker who then proposes who will be Prime Minister and is burdened with the task of forming a Government. If Löfven has not withdrawn, there will be a vote. The parties in the Alliance have made it clear that they will not vote for Löfven as Prime Minister.

No Bloc obtains a majority

With the votes of 6,002 out of the 6,004 polls counted on Monday morning, there was still some excitement attached to a few hundreds of thousands foreign and pre-cast votes that had not yet been counted.

The preliminary result shows that none of the Blocs will obtain a majority. The Red-Green parties have 144 representatives, while the Alliance has 143 before all votes have been counted.

Only when all the votes have been counted on Wednesday will the final result be available. In the 1979 elections, these were decisive for the win of the bourgeois parties.

The Large Parties lose

The Social Democrats had a historically bad election result on Sunday and seem to end up with 28.4 per cent of the votes. This is a decline of 2.8 percentage points from the 2014 elections and a far cry from what it used to be in previous elections.

Moderaterna were nevertheless the biggest loser and appear to have received 19.8 per cent of the votes. At the previous election, the party received 23.3 per cent.

SD still third largest

The Sweden Democrats increase most of all parties and seem to have received 17.6 per cent support, compared to 12.9 per cent in 2014.

SD is thus still the third largest and retains its role as a thorn in the flesh in Riksdagen. All the other parties say no to cooperate with the Swedish Democrats.

No one leaves

In the polls, the Christian Democrats have been below the 4 per cent barrier limit, but the party had a good election campaign and secured 6.4 per cent of the votes.

The Greens (Miljöpartiet) also scraped over the barrier limit but dropped from 6.6 per cent to 4.3 per cent.

The Liberals secured about as many votes as in 2014 and ended at 5.5 per cent.

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